Understanding transformative capacity to boost urban climate adaptation: A Semi-Systematic Literature Review.

Transformative capacity (TC) is key for addressing climate change impacts. It refers to urban areas' ability for profound and intentional change to address current challenges and move towards a more desirable and resilient state. However, its varied applications across disciplines can lead to misunderstandings and implementation challenges. Thus, this Semi-Systematic Literature Review (SSLR) on TC within urban studies from 2016 to 2022 aims to overview and synthesise TC literature and its gaps to inform ongoing debates, intersecting it with climate-related research. The results show an increasing interest in TC within two fields of knowledge: resilience studies and transformative research. The review found TC as a catalyst for transformative actions, promoting sustainable pathways, enhancing resilience, and driving fundamental changes in urban climate adaptation. Finally, the prevailing literature gaps concern the TC concept's fragmentation, excessive research on governance features, and lack of joint research about TC and innovation.

Nature-based solutions in spatial planning and policies for climate change adaptation: A literature review.

Nature-based solutions (NbSs) are recognised as relevant to spatial planning in addressing societal challenges, although their uptake is limited and fragmented to some case studies, and difficulties emerge from their implementation and operationalisation. The research developed a literature review to investigate how NbS has been considered for its implementation and operationalisation in spatial planning and how NbS has been included across different policy instruments and used to address climate change adaptation (CCA). The results highlighted: Firstly, the review contributed to bridge the gap in NbS implementation and operationalisation by proposing a novel three-dimensional categorisation system to guide the selection of suitable NbS principles to address societal challenges; secondly, this study still revealed gaps in some policy areas, despite the effort to extensively apply NbS across diverse policy instruments to CCA. Overall, the review further emphasises the need for future research focused on monitoring and evaluating NbS's effectiveness to CCA.